Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
My sister Jenny went out to pick apples the other day and found a Cinderella pumpkin growing up in her Winesap tree… You can imagine how it happened. Turn your back on a pumpkin vine and it will run off down the road and join the army.
– Wal-Mart’s Plan for Small Farmers Expands Private-Sector Climate Agenda
– UN Says Global Farm Methods ‘Recipe for Disaster’
– Big Food’s Blame Game
– Eating Less Meat Could Save 45,000 Lives a Year
Will my food stay local in hard times? Will we feed our community? Or will the bind that farmers live in – the need to feed the more affluent – continue to constrict my community. This is something I simply do not know. I tend to think, however, that the degree to which the community can support and build a network of intertwined food systems, and intertwined people, will in some measure define this.
Sheep, pigs and cows do not belong to massive agribusiness factories here; they often belong to smallholders, and you will see them in the space of a backyard.
Researchers investigating a coming peak in world phosphorous production have urged caution on the revising up of estimates of reserves in a new report.
A new book by longtime bioregionalist Stephanie Mills tells the story of one of our forerunners in relocalization’s long history. Bob Swann may be the most important pioneer for a just world whom you’ve never heard of. He worked tirelessly over a long life to bring together practical structures for economic justice, land reform, rural investment and credit, complementary currencies, and education.
Together, restoring the earth’s tree and grass cover and practicing conservation agriculture protect soil from erosion and reduce flooding. They also sequester carbon, making them powerful tools in the effort to fight global warming.
-Urban farming yields small climate gains
-Case study: The Year of Urban Agriculture in Seattle
-How to grow food in strange places – by the experts
We are failing at even the most basic risk management. The real-time convergence of peak oil, peak food, and severe instabilities in the global economy may terminally collapse the systems upon which we depend for our basic welfare. The principal risk management challenge is not about how we introduce the energy infrastructure and conservation measures to maintain those systems, but about how we deal with the consequences of their collapse.
If I want something, I won’t forbid it. I’ll just do it eyes wide open. Food and judgment don’t mix—they turn the stomach. I will be kind to myself and others as we stumble towards an ethical relationship with food.
We built our house on the edge of a woodlot thirty some years ago. Now the trees have reached out and enveloped us. They shade us in summer, protect us from wind in winter, and try to kill us by falling in all seasons.
– What a Scientist Didn’t Tell the New York Times About His Study on Bee Deaths
– What Monsanto’s fall from grace reveals about the GMO seed industry
– Russia backs away from plans to break up the unique Pavlovsk seed bank
